The Resolution Foundation has said typical household disposable incomes were on course to be lower by the end of the forecast period in 2027-28 than they were before the pandemic, when inflation was taken into account.

Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was unable to change the course of declining living standards, the foundation said.

“Britain’s economy remains stuck in a deep funk – with people supported into work but getting poorer, and paying more tax but seeing public services cut,” the report said.

Workers also face paying more to the Treasury because personal tax thresholds have been frozen instead of rising with inflation, meaning wage growth pushes more people into higher rate bands – a phenomenon known as “fiscal drag”.

Intense cost pressure on public services from stagnant budget allocations and rising inflation were “largely ignored” in the budget, the thinktank said, adding that Whitehall departments outside the protected areas of health, schools and defence faced 10% cuts in real terms to day-to-day spending per head by 2027-28. This loss of spending power across most government departments will rise to 14% “if the newly announced aspiration for defence spending to rise to 2.5% of GDP is met over the next parliament”.

Budget: UK on track for ‘disastrous decade’ of income stagnation | Budget 2023 | The Guardian

 The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said, according to a landmark report on the economics of water. The report marks the first time the global water system has been scrutinised comprehensively and its value to countries – and the risks to their prosperity if water is neglected.

Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian the world’s current neglect of water resources was leading to disaster. 

“The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It’s a triple crisis.” Water is fundamental to the climate crisis and the global food crisis. “There will be no agricultural revolution unless we fix water,” said Rockstrom.

Mariana Mazzucato, an economist and professor at University College London, also a lead author, added:

 “We need a much more proactive, and ambitious, common good approach. We have to put justice and equity at the centre of this, it’s not just a technological or finance problem.”

Many governments still do not realise how interdependent they are when it comes to water, according to Rockstrom. Most countries depend for about half of their water supply on the evaporation of water from neighbouring countries – known as “green” water because it is held in soils and delivered from transpiration in forests and other ecosystems, when plants take up water from the soil and release vapour into the air from their leaves.

Many of the ways in which water is used are inefficient and in need of change, with Rockstrom pointing to developed countries’ sewage systems.

 “It’s quite remarkable that we use safe, fresh water to carry excreta, urine, nitrogen, phosphorus – and then need to have inefficient wastewater treatment plants that leak 30% of all the nutrients into downstream aquatic ecosystems and destroy them and cause dead zones. We’re really cheating ourselves…”

 Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, say experts | Water | The Guardian

 The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning of a “silent pandemic” of antimicrobial resistance. Five million deaths are associated every year due to antimicrobial resistance, according to the release.  2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result,

“Antibiotic resistance is one of the major concerns in modern medicine today,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital on Long Island, New York, explained. “There is a dearth of safe, effective and inexpensive agents to use to treat many of these significant infections. It is critical that new and innovative products be investigated.” Glatt added.

Pharmaceutical companies must invest in the research and development phase to find an antimicrobial agent that will combat drug resistant pathogens, experts say. Yet these drugs are as likely to fail during this process as drugs for other diseases that may yield a much better return on the investment, such as cancer and heart drugs. 

It’s often simply cheaper to bring ‘me-too’ drugs to the market than try and completely redesign a new drug. Look at how many different statin drugs we have that are basically identical. How many SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] depression drugs are available with minimal differences.

You only ever need an antibiotic ideally for a brief period of time, yet a cholesterol drug or an HIV antiviral is forever.

‘Silent pandemic’ warning from WHO: Bacteria killing too many people due to antimicrobial resistance | Fox News

 Research from the Trades Union Congress based on ONS data covering the third quarter of 2022 found that 16.7% of London workers did unpaid overtime work in 2022, more than any other region in the UK. 

£7.3 billion worth of unpaid overtime work, more than the next two regions – the South East and the East of England – combined.

These employees performing an average of 8.4 extra hours per week, also the highest in the UK, 

The average loss per employee was £10,796.

Unpaid overtime was more common in the public sector, where 14.8% of employees reported working extra hours without pay, compared to 11.7% in the private sector.

“Nobody minds putting in longer hours for time to time,” TUC Regional Secretary Sam Gurney said. “But some workers in London put in thousands of pounds worth of unpaid overtime last year. Unpaid hours should never be a regular habit – that’s just exploitation. With staff shortages in many industries, work intensity and pressure to work longer days is a big problem.”

Overtime pay: Londoners did £7.3 billion worth of unpaid work last year | Evening Standard

RS

 There are now more food banks across the UK than there are McDonald’s outlets.

 While demand has soared, donations have plummeted – in some cases by up to 70%. Protein-rich foods donations in particular have become a scarcity.

“It’s crazy and indefensible,” says the MP Charles Walker. “Venison is a wonderful, sustainable resource but is seen as too posh to eat, ergo – very few people eat it and it ends up being made into dog food. It’s a contradiction of mind-bending proportions.”

Thanks to a two-year pause in culling during Covid, the deer population is at its highest level for 1,000 years: at about 2 million animals – 50 years ago, the population was at 450,000. These herds are growing exponentially: at the current rate, there will be almost 2.4 million deer in the UK by the end of the year.  At least 750,000 animals need to be culled this year just to stop this enormous population increasing further. Thanks to post-Brexit complications in exporting the meat, however, and the lack of a UK market for venison, only 350,000 animals are currently being culled each year.

At the same time, a growing number of families hit by the cost of living crisis need healthy food, particularly from protein-rich food groups including meat.

Forestry England, Farm Wilder and the Country Food Trust have created a pipeline funnelling protein-rich, low-fat, low-cholesterol venison meals to food banks, schools, hospitals, the armed forces and prisons across the country. By the end of the year, it is hoped 1 million visitors to food banks will have dined on wild venison ragu. And that’s just the pilot: the aim is to roll the scheme out nationally.

Forestry England will supply 5,000kg of wild venison from forests in Devon and Cornwall to Farm Wilder this year. It will process the venison into ragu and the Country Food Trust will distribute it. 

“These meals have literally been a lifesaver,” said Gill Bates, the manager of the Bexley food bank in Erith. “Demand from families is up by 150% but we often have no protein in stock at all. This is a problem because from a health point of view, proteins are the building blocks of life, far more so than the white carbohydrates we get donated in far greater bulk.”

‘Deer are destroying habitats’: push to get venison on to UK dinner plates | Food banks | The Guardian

 Asylum seekers and refugees who were already only barely surviving. In the UK, asylum seekers are generally barred from work until they have attained refugee status. If they do not receive an initial decision on their asylum claims within 12 months, they may apply for jobs only on a list determined by the Home Office to be in short supply in Britain, including nurses, social workers and engineers. 

Although the Home Office says asylum claims are usually processed in six months, the Refugee Council charity published a report in 2021 showing that the average wait time for even an initial decision is likely to be one to three years with some waiting up to five years. Advocacy groups estimate that this waiting time has not decreased since then.

Asylum seekers who report being destitute are provided with accommodation but cannot choose where they live. They are entitled to a £45 weekly allowance to buy essentials. 

It is an amount that works out to £2,340 a year. 

This is less than a tenth of the £25,500 that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the poverty alleviation charity, recommends as necessary for a minimum acceptable annual standard of living although this sum includes housing, which destitute asylum seekers do not need to pay for. Experts say that there are usually long delays for asylum seekers to receive this allowance. Many wait up to a year.

In the UK, once asylum seekers are given refugee status, there is a 28-day period before all their support comes to an end.

 A report by the British Red Cross and the UN Refugee Agency in August revealed that futile attempts to secure employment to pay the bills have driven asylum seekers and refugees into domestic servitude, labour exploitation and forced criminality.

“One month after asylum seekers get refugee status, they no longer get shelter or support. But just because you’re now a refugee, it doesn’t mean you speak the language or have a job.”

 The British charity Maternity Action reported that in 2021, its specialist support line helped 407 pregnant asylum seekers and refugees in the UK who had been erroneously charged for healthcare with fees beginning at around £7,000. Asylum seekers and refugees are legally exempt from healthcare fees charged to foreigners by the National Health Service (NHS).

Pip McKnight, a former community midwife specialising in immigrant maternal health and a teaching fellow at Coventry University, suggested that pregnant asylum seekers might not know how to navigate the healthcare system when they arrive.

“This could be because of difficulties with language or just anxiety over a healthcare system that looks quite different to the one in their home countries,” she said. “And the NHS doesn’t always understand these women’s needs or that they shouldn’t be charged.”

Asylum seekers in the UK are excluded from the state-run Healthy Start scheme, which offers vouchers for fruit and vegetables and milk for low-income pregnant women. That means they end up having to “spend what little allowance they have on these things, … and that obviously makes a huge dent,” McKnight said.

Asylum-seeking and refugee women are also being forced into making difficult sacrifices just to keep their families going, according to Sarah Taal, advocacy and policy director at the Baobab Women’s Project, a grassroots advocacy group in Birmingham, UK.

“Those with pre-existing [health] conditions feel shamed by their doctors for buying processed food instead of fresher options, which they simply can’t afford,” she said. “Mothers are also struggling to prepare nutritious meals or buy clothes for their growing children.”

“We’ve also heard about women starving in order to purchase items needed for their personal hygiene,” Taal said. “This can include shampoo, soap, menstruation products and so on.”

Özlem Ögtem-Young, who is head of research on poverty, precarity, savings and debt at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said charities that are themselves hit hard by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have been struggling to support the increasing numbers of asylum seekers in need of food and clothing.

“There are reports of outbursts at food banks when people are turned away, causing anger, desperation and distress,” she explained. Many charities that have witnessed cuts in funding and resources have been forced to put their services on hold, Ögtem-Young said.

 Community organisers are increasingly concerned about asylum seekers losing safe spaces where they can find support and also socialise, seek out learning opportunities and gain a sense of belonging. Rising prices are likely to force desperate refugees into slavery or trafficking. 

 Lifting the existing ban on asylum seekers’ access to the labour market would save the economy more than £333 million a year. That would include about £249 million in tax contributions and the rest through savings on some subsistence support that could be reduced for those who find work.

 Ireland is a country showing a positive example. In 2022, Ireland launched a scheme to give the country’s 17,000 undocumented people legal access to its labour market without fearing deportation or arrest. Earlier, during the pandemic, it became the first EU country to offer hardship payments to undocumented non-citizens. Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Spain are also making moves towards giving undocumented people the legal right to work.

Instead of spending millions of pounds on detention camps and hotel accommodations for refugees and asylum seekers, the government, for instance, could subsidise regular housing for them,  helping asylum seekers and refugees integrate better into their new neighbourhoods.  

Can asylum seekers in Europe survive the cost-of-living crisis? | Refugees | Al Jazeera

 Life expectancy in the UK has grown at a slower rate than comparable countries over the past seven decades, according to researchers, who say this is the result of widening inequality.

According to a new analysis of global life expectancy rankings published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine the UK lags behind all other countries in the group of G7 advanced economies except the USA.

While life expectancy has increased in absolute terms, similar countries have experienced larger increases. 

In the 1950s, the UK had one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranking seventh globally behind countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but in 2021 the UK was ranked 29th. This was partly due to income inequality, which rose considerably in the UK during and after the 1980s.

Prof Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “That rise also saw an increase in the variation in life expectancy between different social groups. One reason why the overall increase in life expectancy has been so sluggish in the UK is that in recent years it has fallen for poorer groups. While politicians invoke global factors, especially the effects of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine, the reality is that, as in the 1950s, the country suffers from major structural and institutional weaknesses.”

One of the co-authors, Dr Lucinda Hiam of Oxford University, explained, “A relative worsening of population health is evidence that all is not well. It has historically been an early sign of severe political and economic problems. This new analysis suggests that the problems the UK faces are deep-seated and raises serious questions about the path that this country is following.”

Dr Jonathan Filippon, senior lecturer in health systems at Queen Mary University of London, said social inequality had worsened in the UK and US because of the “predominant ideologies”.

“The major liberal approach to nation states inaugurated by the duo Thatcher and Reagan had disastrous consequences to their population’s levels of equality,” he said. “While markets can continue to thrive in countries – even during a crisis such as we’ve seen recently with the UK energy sector – they can also exacerbate inequalities as well.”

UK life expectancy growing at slower rate than rest of G7, research shows | Life expectancy | The Guardian

 In South Africa, men spend on average only two years in retirement.

In Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Latvia and Russia – as well as in Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa – men spend on average less than 10 years in retirement.

Iceland, Israel and Norway have the oldest retirement ages at 67. However, life expectancy is also about 81 – meaning on average men in these countries spend 14 years in retirement.

Where in the world can you have the longest retirement? | Interactive News | Al Jazeera

 The drop in real household disposable income would represent “the largest two-year fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s,” Richard Hughes, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said.

“Over the last 12 years, Britain has experienced the longest phase of real wage stagnation since the early 19th century,” Scott Lavery, a lecturer in politics at the University of Sheffield, told DW. “Since the financial crisis, we’ve seen sustained real wage decline.”

Real incomes — after accounting for inflation — have fallen 5.1% since December 2007, according to UK government figures. This coupled with the inflation crisis, which Lavery said was “eroding living standards dramatically,” has left British workers struggling to stay afloat.

“In France, there is a sense of defending an existing standard of living, while in the UK, people feel that whatever used to exist has gone,” Sam Moorecroft, vice president of the Trades Union Council in the city of Sheffield, told DW. “When Thatcher defeated the miners’ in the 1980s, many believed that the trade union movement had been completely defeated. But now, there is a move to return to the same level of union participation as the past,” Moorecroft added.

Moorecroft noted how non-unionized workplaces are increasingly mobilizing for better pay and conditions, citing a recent strike at Amazon’s largest UK fulfillment center, in Coventry. Around 300 workers at the 1,400-strong warehouse walked out several times over the past two months over low wages and grueling round-the-clock shift patterns.

While the US tech firm’s French and German workers have previously staged several strikes, particularly around the Black Friday sales, Amazon has so far refused to recognize Britain’s GMB union, which fights for the rights of the firm’s employees in the UK. 

Unions are reaching out to younger workers, who are more likely to be on the minimum wage, and a third of whom are on zero-hours contracts. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) calculated recently that nearly 90% of those under 30 on low to median incomes in Britain work in the private sector, which is mostly non-unionized.

The Low Pay Commission, which advises the UK government, found last month that many UK employers were failing to incorporate annual hikes to the national minimum wage — a phenomenon known as wage theft. Before the pandemic, around 22% of minimum wage earners were underpaid but by April 2022, that figure had grown to almost a third.

Public support for walkouts in the UK has always been mixed as memories of the Winter of Discontent linger. During the coldest months of 1978-9, the country was brought to a standstill by large-scale private and public sector strikes that caused food shortages, weeks of uncollected garbage and, in one city, the dead to lay unburied. This time, however, with public services already defective, the cost of living crisis hitting everyone’s pockets and living standards lower than a decade ago, the public’s backing for strikes is noticeably higher.

A poll by Sky News in January found that 63% of Britons strongly support or somewhat support walkouts by healthcare workers, with 49% backing wider public sector action.

“There is certainly a sense that those core public sector workers that kept the economy running during the pandemic have strong public support … particularly nurses, despite their strikes having potentially life or death consequences,” Lavery said. 

Lavery told DW, “The UK already has some of the most restrictive anti-union legislation in the Western world and Sunak is trying to tighten up further … so he’s far from being a peacemaker.”

Why the British are suddenly so strike-happy – DW – 03/15/2023